REBECCA AGUILAR UPDATE: Unfair Park notes the Marisa Trevino piece I linked the other day, and observes:
Marisa Trevino is a friend of Rebecca Aguilar’s; she’s very clear about that in her Scripps News-syndicated column about Aguilar’s continued absence from KDFW-Channel 4, from which Aguilar was indefinitely suspended in October following her polarizing parking-lot interview with James Walton. But regardless of the columnist’s relationship with Aguilar, her question is legit: Why, after the managing editor and cameraman involved with the controversial piece received only hand slaps, hasn’t the station lifted Aguilar’s suspension?
Blog-commenters aren’t buying Trevino’s “racism” claim, and rightly so. Had a middle-aged white guy treated an elderly Hispanic woman the way that Rebecca Aguilar treated her victim interviewee, Trevino would likely find the behavior objectionable. So is her defense of Aguilar racist?
That said, she didn’t run the piece on her own, and other people at the station thought it was worth airing. It’s hard to justify the disparity in treatment, though I suppose you’d argue that a news anchor or correspondent is a “brand” and Aguilar has seriously damaged hers.